Sarah Stern’s Opening Remarks at EMET’s “Rays of Light in the Darkness” Dinner
Founder & President of EMET

Transcript below:

My name is Sarah Stern and I am the Founder and President of EMET, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you here to our ninth annual “Rays of Light in the Darkness Dinner”.

Before we begin, I want to introduce my wonderful staff at EMET who worked tirelessly to make this event possible: Adam Turner, Russ Read, Jennifer Dekel, Jeffrey Riebman and most importantly Deanne Heffernan who did the lion’s share of the work in putting this beautiful evening together!

I also want to thank our amazing Chairman of Board of Directors, Dr. David Green, who has all but abandoned his dermatology practice because he works so tirelessly for the state of Israel and for EMET.

Niccolo Machiavelli is known to have said, “You keep your enemies close, and your friends at a distance.”

President Barack Obama seems to believe that you hold your enemies close, and you throw your friends under the bus.

From the abandoned missile defense treaty made to the Czechs and the Poles, to the vanishing “red line” over the use of chemical weapons in Syria, to the promise that “Iran must never get a nuclear weapon”- when he was speaking to AIPAC, while running for re-election in 2012, America’s commitments and promises under this President are growing increasingly cheaper and cheaper, by the day

There was a time—and I am hopeful that there will be a time, once again-where America was regarded as the moral barometer of the universe; in the immortal words of President Ronald Reagan, that “shining city on the Hill”, the force in the universe of good against evil.

And Americans, alone in history, have proven to be great human beings, who understand the distinction between good and evil, and when evil existed, they have always risen to the call of duty. Americans have not hesitated to serve, and have been prepared, even, to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Because we know that when America retreats from the world’s stage, all of the moral cockroaches, from Vladimir Putin to Ayatollah Khamenei swoop in to fill the void.

Unfortunately, our President does not seem to think like the most Americans. He seems to base his foreign policy on how he thinks the world ought to be; not as the world actually is.

On December 18th, in an interview with NPR, President Obama said “he envisions a day that Iran can become a very successful regional power.”

Iran?

This is the same Iran who is the world’s leading state sponsor of Islamic Terrorism.

This is the same Iran who every November 4th celebrates an annual “Death to America Day” commemorating the 1979 takeover of our American Embassy in Tehran.

This is the same Iran whose Iranian-made IED’s killed or wounded thousands of Americans in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is the same Iran that has routinely tortures and executes prisoners for crimes which include blogging against the regime, being raped, being of a different religion, or for being gay.

And in the words of the great Russian human rights dissident, Aleksandra Solzhenitsyn, “You can tell a nation’s foreign policy by the way they treat their own dissident population.”

George Orwell once said that “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Then we, here at EMET can all consider ourselves revolutionaries.

But in the Orwellian universe that Obama inhabits, Israel-that tiny valiant nation, surrounded by an imploding and an increasingly radicalized Middle East, who in 67 short years has become the capitol of medical innovation and high tech., and is, the first to respond to a hurricane or an earthquake in Nepal or Haiti, or anywhere around the globe, our Eastern outpost of Western democratic values, where Arabs sit in the Kinesset and in the Supreme Court of the land, where IDF ambulances help thousands of Syrian war victims without one single word of questioning about whom they are fighting for—This is the one nation whose Prime Minister our President singles out for moral opprobrium?

And For what? For trying to protect its people from the threat of annihilation by an Iranian nuclear bomb?

Ladies and Gentlemen, The moral universe has been turned on its head, and most Americans, including most Jewish Americans, are asleep at the wheel of history. This is 1939 all over again.

It was just revealed yesterday by James Clapper in a letter to senators that the Obama administration played down the threat of terrorism posed by Iran, in the 2015 World Threat Assessment.

And every single negotiating point-from the dismantlement of its nuclear infrastructure, to its on site inspections, to its explanation of its prior weaponization work, to the duration of the time frame before breakout, to the gradual lifting on sanctions, based on compliance, we have reneged on.

Ladies and Gentlemen: We are not negotiating. We are groveling.

I never thought the America I love so much would come to this.

But There are People in this room, including General Michel Flynn and Ambassador James Woolsey, to my friend, the journalist, Cal Thomas, who are trying, with all of their might, to turn the world, right side up, again; and they do this in one way: by courageously speaking-the Truth- the EMET– against some very, powerful, formidable forces. These people are all Rays of Light in the Darkness.

And of course among them are the recipients of this year’s “Speakers of the Truth Award” Including: